Mother of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny says she’s being pressured into ‘secret’ burial for him
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Mrs Lyudmila Navalnaya, Alexei Navalny's mother, accused Russian investigators of planning to bury her son in secret without a funeral, and said she would not agree to it.
PHOTOS: REUTERS, EPA-EFE
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MOSCOW – The mother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison
The Navalny case remained in the international spotlight, with United States President Joe Biden meeting the Russian politician’s widow
Mrs Lyudmila Navalnaya, mother of President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critic, said she had been shown his body in the morgue in Salekhard, the nearest town to the remote prison, after several days of being barred from seeing her son.
“Yesterday evening, they secretly took me to the morgue where they showed me Alexei,” she said, in a video released on social media by Navalny’s team.
But she added that investigators wanted her son, who was 47, to be buried “secretly, without a chance to say goodbye”.
“They are blackmailing me, they put conditions for where, when and how Alexei should be buried. This is illegal,” she said.
Navalny, whose death was announced on Feb 16, galvanised mass protests against Mr Putin, winning popularity with a series of investigations into state corruption.
He was poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent in 2020 and then jailed in 2021 after returning to Russia following a period of treatment in Germany.
He was sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges and sent to IK-3, a harsh penal colony beyond the Arctic Circle known as “Polar Wolf”.
Western governments and Russian opposition figures have accused the Kremlin of being responsible for Navalny’s death on Feb 16.
Investigators ‘threatening’
Mr Biden privately met Navalny’s widow and daughter “to express his heartfelt condolences for their terrible loss”, the White House said.
The White House also backed the mother’s campaign to retrieve Navalny’s body.
“The Russians need to give her back her son,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
Hundreds of people have been detained in Russia
Mrs Lyudmila Navalnaya travelled to Russia’s far north the morning after Navalny’s death was announced, hoping to be able to see and retrieve her son’s body.
“They want to take me to the edge of a cemetery to a fresh grave and say ‘Here is where your son lies’. I am against that.
“I want for those of you for whom Alexei is dear, for everyone for whom his death became a personal tragedy, to have the possibility to say goodbye to him.”
She said that she recorded the video because investigators were threatening her.
“Looking me in the eye, they said if I do not agree to a secret funeral, they’ll do something with my son’s body... I ask for my son’s body to be given to me immediately.”
The mother added that investigators told her they knew the cause of death but did not say what it was.
The Kremlin has refused to say when the body will be handed over and has branded Western accusations as hysterical.
Mr Putin has so far remained silent on the death of his main political opponent.
Ms Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman, said a medical report on the death shown to his mother “stated that the cause of death was natural”. AFP